In that hour, the highly trained men of Balck’s division moved like a well-oiled machine. It was going to be very bad luck for the Soviet attack emerging from the Boguchar Bridgehead, and to make matters worse, the 23rd Panzer Division was close by, as was a new brigade of heavier tanks, the 102nd, which was at Martovka, about 30 kilometers southwest of Kantirmirovka. That unit had 28 Lions, two dozen Panthers and another 50 lighter tanks, the IV-F2s and the fast new Leopard medium recon tanks. Between the three formations, Balck would have command of well over 250 tanks. In fact, in this one small segment of the vast battle line that stretched for hundreds of miles in either direction, Balck commanded a force with greater striking power than Feldmarshall Erwin Rommel had in his Afrika Korps at that moment.
That was a clear lesson on just how impoverished Rommel’s forces had been in North Africa, and at the same time how massive the Russian front was by comparison. The Soviets were going to throw a force twice the size of the British 8th Army in Africa at Balck, and it would be all in a day’s work for him to dismantle those divisions, one by one. Yet, as strong and capable as it was, Balck’s division could not be everywhere. To his immediate left and right, the Armies attacking on either side of his defense also created battles that doubled and even tripled the size of a typical engagement fought by Rommel.
The most serious penetration was 120 miles east of Balck’s position, the main attack staged by Zhukov that had achieved a spectacular breakthrough. Kempf’s column had barely slipped by its leading elements as it hastened west again at Steiner’s urging, and not really knowing just how bad the breakthrough was, Steiner ordered the Wiking SS Division north immediately, sending them towards a small hamlet called Perelazovsky. The division had been re-supplying on the Chir, and now it trucked north with its three motorized infantry regiments, arriving to fill a 15-kilometer-wide hole in the line between the 46th Infantry on the left, and the 50th Division on the right—and that was not even the main breakthrough zone.
Steiner’s appraisal of this action as nothing more than a spoiling attack was gravely wrong. The nearest German division to the west of the 46th was over 30 kilometers away, defending just southwest of Veshenskaya. It was therefore a combination of insufficient reconnaissance and pure hubris that led Steiner to continue with his battle in the Kalach Bridgehead, where both Grossdeutschland Division and the Brandenburgers were still locked in a death grip with Chiukov’s Volga Guard Rifle Corps. He was also busy supervising the opening of a new pontoon bridge south of the main bridge at Kalach, where he sent the 102nd Infantry Division across to pressure that flank. They would cross and storm directly into the teeth of the newly arriving 18th Tank Corps, another surprise delivered by Georgie Zhukov.
General Felix Steiner had once commanded the 5th SS, and when he moved up to Korps level, his shoes were filled by the very capable Otto Gille, a man who was destined to become the most highly decorated SS officer of the war. Gille was a hard fighting realist leading hard fighting men, yet when he arrived at the position Steiner had ordered him to take, he was shocked to see that the line there was already outflanked to the west.
The Soviet 5th Cavalry and 17th Tank Corps went right through that gap in the front, and raced south, completely unopposed. By the morning of the 24th, a disgruntled supply clerk was awakened by the sound of rumbling vehicles. It was most likely a column coming in for fuel or parts or some other bothersome request, and well before breakfast. He got up from his cot, stuck his head out of his field tent, and was amazed to find the column pulling into his small forward depot in a village north of Morozovsk was composed of Russian tanks.
Gille could see what was happening all around him. Fast moving enemy cavalry were already 30 kilometers to his southwest, and the 46th Infantry Division was now entirely swamped by the pressing mass of Russian infantry. To make matters worse, he found his troops arriving in the middle of a big attack through the gap in the line his division was filling. No less than four Rifle Divisions, two of them Guards units, were joined by a cavalry division for this push, and The Wikings were all that barred the way.
Those odds were not really as steep as they sounded, for each of Gille’s three Motorized Regiments, Nordland, Germania and Westland, had the fighting power of a full Russian Rifle Division. So it was really more like five to three in that face off, but the units already behind him were of some concern. He got on the radio to Steiner at once.
“Herr General,” he said. “We have plugged the dike, but the water has already spilled through. We’ve spotted enemy cavalry well south and west of our position. I’m sending the recon battalion to slow them down.”
“That’s the least of my problems now,” said Steiner, the frustration evident in his hard voice. “The Russians are already approaching Morozovsk!”
“My God! You can’t allow them to take that. If they cut that road, then your entire force is cut off.”
“Not entirely,” said Steiner with just an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “We have a bridge at Tormosin where we can always move in with Volkov’s boys south of the Don. Very well, I pulled the Totenkopf Division from Tormosin last night. They need rest and have very little in the way of supplies and ammunition, but I will send them to Morozovsk.”
“Do you still want me to stand my ground here? There’s another big attack coming in right now.”
“Hold as long as practical. Can you make contact with 46th Infantry?”
“They are well to our west.”
“Well try to fold back your flank there, and yes, stand your ground. This is much bigger than I realized. If we can’t stop it soon, we’ll lose the bridgehead at Kalach, and I will not want to be the man who reports that to OKW and the Führer.”
The next call went all the way to Eric Manstein at Armeegruppe South HQ in Kharkov. It was Steiner, laying out the situation in no uncertain terms, a massive Soviet attack all along his northern flank, the infantry buckling, but holding, enemy penetration and fast moving columns sweeping to interdict any road or rail they could find. When Manstein learned that his reserve 48th Panzer Korps was already heavily engaged, he knew things were quite serious. He needed another strong mobile force to plan a counter move, but the only existing formation in the entire army was von Wietersheim’s 14th Panzer Korps, well west of Kharkov. It was on good rail lines, and rolling stock was at hand. The only complication was that he would now need OKW approval to use that Korps, which meant he had to confer with Hitler and Halder.
Manstein knew that there was also a big offensive underway in the center. That force was held where it was to be a central reserve, and von Rundstedt would want it to further his drive east. If he merely sent a telegram requesting the panzers, he knew Halder would likely refuse. He had to go in person, and so he rushed to the nearest airport and got aboard a fast He-111.
Hitler had wanted to get closer to the front, and had taken his personal train, Führersonderzug Brandenburg, to move from the Wolfsschanze in Rastenburg to HQ Werewolf in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. That HQ was well named, for he had been in high spirits, until the news of what was happening fell upon him like cold moonlight, and a terrible transformation ensued. Suddenly, all the progress made over the last few weeks counted for naught. The fact that von Rundstedt’s thrust had been stopped, and now hearing that Manstein’s attack was faltering and under heavy counterattack, enraged him. Steiner had been his unfailing sword. He had pierced the last river barrier before Volgograd, but now that sword was stuck in the hard steel wall of the Volga Guard Rifles.